Handcart Pioneer Trek - Finally!

Over a year ago Jane and I were asked to be in charge of cooking for the Highlands Ranch Stake youth handcart pioneer trek. Our stake has the trek every four years so that youth get to go once. Also, we are fortunate that we are close enough to Martin's Cove, which is about 50 miles west of Casper, that we can hold our trek at the real site where the handcart pioneers were rescued. The bus ride is about five and a half hours. Due to safety reasons, we chartered five tour-quality buses for the participants. Most of the kitchen staff drove up in our own vehicles the night before so we could start setting up before the rest of the stake arrived. Jane and I drove the food truck. Let me tell you that was one long, rough ride! The church has purchased or leased some 20,000 acres at the site, and runs a historical/missionary center there that is open to the public during spring and summer months, and from which they have a full schedule of ward/stake treks the entire summer. We had about 210 youth and eighty leaders and staff at our event. The Bureau of Land Management restricts the number of people on the site at any one time so 300 was our upper limit. Many of the adults that wanted to go couldn't because of the size limit. There was also budget limits as well.

Very early on in the planning I felt very strongly that I would need 14 people in the kitchen and we worked to that. We ended up with about 16, but sometimes one or two would leave to participate in some part of the trek with their leader-spouses. Our vision for food was that the food would be a high-point for the participants, and that they would have dinner ready when they arrived back in camp each day. We had a fixed-location base camp and the youth traveled to and from the same camp for three days/two nights. This allowed us to have fairly elaborate cooking set up.

The trekkers were divided up into families, with an adult "Ma and Pa" and 8 or 9 children, with a "big brother and big sister" who were high school seniors. During the day they travelled with the handcarts, which held water, food, snacks, and a 5 gallon bucket for each person that held their personal gear. The buckets were also used for chairs.

All participants, including the kitchen staff, had to dress in pioneer attire at all times except at bed time. In retrospect, the clothing really adds to the experience and prevents a lot of hormonal tension between the boys and girls since they are all dressed so modestly; particularly the girls.

The core of our meal preparation was a refrigerated truck that we rented and kept all the food in. We were able to have fresh dairy products, meats, and produce for every meal which really added to the overall meal experience. We cooked some of the meats in advance and froze it which definitely reduced meal prep times, but quite frankly we were up at 5am, and didn't finish until 11pm both nights in spite of all the advanced prep. During the middle of the day on Friday (our main day) most of the food committee folks jumped in our vehicles and met up with the trekkers and got to cross the Sweetwater River and go up into Martin's Cove with the rest of the group, which was a big highlight for all of us and we didn't feel like we missed much (except the blisters) for working in the kitchen.

We had a couple professional photographers from the Stake taking pictures and videos almost the entire time, and the Sunday after we got back we had a big fireside and they showed a video presentation of the entire trek. At the end of the fireside everyone got a professionally-produced DVD of the presentation. I still get choked up in some places when I watch it; especially during the kids' testimonies that are sprinkled throughout.

This is Seth's trek "family". We didn't get very many pictures of Seth because we were in the kitchen for a lot of it, and quite frankly it was sometimes hard to spot him because he looked so much like the other boys.

One of the events on the trek was a not-too-historically-accurate Mormon Batallion recruitment where the boys are marched away from their families and get a talk on honoring women. At the same time the girls get a talk about honoring the Priesthood. The boys then get to watch (but not help) the girls do their event called the "Women's Pull" where the girls have to pull their handcarts without help up a pretty steep and rocky part of the trail that is maybe 1/3 - 1/2 mile long. The girls get a great appreciation for the women who were single or lost husbands on the trail.

Seth and his fellow "men" get marched off to the top of the bluff where they will watch the young women. Seth in on the right in the green bandana in the first picture and on the left in the second. The Sweetwater River is in the background of the second picture, and Martin's Cove is in the far distant background.



The next day the kids pulled their handcarts about 6 1/2 miles from camp to the place on the Sweetwater River where four young boys from the rescue party carried over 300 people across the semi-frozen river in October of 1849. Some of the boys were selected to carry a girl from their family to commemorate the event. Seth was one of the boys. After the boys carried the girl across, the rest of the family got to pull the handcart across the river. We were fortunate because the river had been so high they weren't letting anyone cross until our weekend. We were literally the first group of the season that was allowed to cross with the handcarts. It wasn't the danger to people, but if the water gets into the hubs of the carts they don't last very long.

This is Seth listening to a guy in our Stake who is a living decendant of the one of the four boys tell the story of the Sweetwater River crossing before his group crossed.

Seth carrying a girl from his family across the Sweetwater River

The weather couldn't have been better. Beautiful blue skies and Spring and Summer had been so rainy that the praire is still green in mid-July. Antelope were everywhere and the sky was HUGE. Add to that being on the real Oregon trail the pioneers walked and in these sacred places it was an amazing experience.

All of the water in camp came from this hand pump.

Sunrise at the beginning of a long day for everyone, especially the photographers and cooks!

Oscar is a semi-wild dog that lives on the reservation but is not a pet nor is he fed or cared for. He is some kind of shepherd dog and will adopt a trek group and protect them. He found a rattlesnake in our camp and barked to warn everyone, and he kept the coyotes away. When they started howling he would bark a couple of times and they would be quiet. Here he is with his breakfast. He wasn't too interested in ours.

Despite complaints about having to wear pioneer clothes, don't the girls look darling in this picture?

You can see a group of boys being marched off "to war" in the distance while the girls are pulling the handcart up the hill. Every family had their own family flag.

These are the girls from Seth's family on the Women's Pull.

Many of the kitchen staff were the spouses of Young Men's advisors. Here I am with my kitchen "wives". Any resemblance to groups that practice polygamy is purely intentional. Comment on bonnets: they look much better hanging behind on your back than on your head.

Here is the beginning of our field kitchen. We had to heat up our sloppy-joe lunch and transport it to the headquarters area to feed the kids as they got off the bus and we weren't done setting up. Then we came back and finished setting up our kitchen. We had four carport-type canopies and we were pretty crowded in there. We never had rain, but the wind came up a couple of times. Fortunately everything was staked down well (we knew to expect the wind). The kitchen became the center of camp where all the leaders hung out.

You can cook Mexican rice for 150 people in one of these big roasting pans. First you saute the rice... We had two of those big square pans for rice for our first meal of tortillas, refried roast pork, rice, beans, cheese, lettuce. The rice turned out perfect! Chocolate cake and cold milk was the dessert after the square dance later than night. One of the guys on the committee was a welder and he significantly upgraded my griddle to have sides and a greese trap. You can see it in the background.

Some of the crew including Jane preparing "Ginger Chicken", a easy asian meal we served with rice and pineapple. Cookies and milk for dessert that night.

Jane cutting up fresh ginger for the dinner

This is a video of our kitchen in action. Sorry about the quality, this is a video of the DVD as it played on my computer screen. I don't have DVD ripping software. Sorry! But you get the idea.

As we were breaking down camp some of our crew decided to have a charriot race. Mom's team lost, despite Sister Hurlin's recent Boston Marathon qualification.

This is the inside of the "reefer" truck with $6,000 worth of food. That sounds like a lot but we fed everyone for about $2.50 per person per meal. And our vision and hope was met; everyone thought the food was amazing and we got favorable mentions almost every time someone spoke about trek.